- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.ml
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I used to wonder if I would ever walk on the moon or Mars during my lifetime when I was a kid. I miss that
Meanwhile, Asimov: We’ll have robots that will help us accomplish crazy shit but stupid zealots will keep whining about it and holding them back
This is in no way relevant to anything that’s happening today.
now take that and replace “robots” with “shareholders”. perspective of every single big shareholder today.
as a kid i was so convinced, near the end of 90s i thought “maybe there are huge advancements made but they’re saving it for the year 2000 so it’ll be bombastic like people have expected.”
instead we got fucking segway lol
People are confusing optimism with naiveté. The old sci-fi assumed the rate of progress with be constant or even accelerate. They saw people got to space and moon in what? 20 years? So they thought we will get to Mars by the end of century and beyond our solar system some time after that. They didn’t predict the end of Cold War and massive disinvestment from space exploration. But there were plenty of pessimistic takes on the future. In Bladerunner all the animals are dead, in Alien everything is run by evil corporations, in Battlestar Galactica everyone dies, in Star Wars whole worlds are destroyed, apocalyptic visions are common. Getting the dates wrong is not the same as being optimistic.
Old sci-fi assumed progress in the physical world, of endless progress in speed or materials.
Instead we got near endless progress in the processing of information while we live in houses made of trees, drive cars on rubber tires, and eat animals. Much like before. Sure, we have jets, but even they work pretty much the same way as 50 years ago. Incremental progress, sure, but no warp drive, eh?
never watched the original series but if you’re talking about the reimagined series BSG technically doesn’t belong in the list. don’t want to spoil why.
I also never watched original BSG but I assumed the part about aliens blowing up everything and the war with robots in general was still there.
yeah but that’s not the relevant part. the list is about pessimistic takes on the future.
also star wars takes place a long time ago so technically that doesn’t belong either
I think that global war with machines and death of most of the population is quite a pessimistic take on the future.
did you not watch the finale?
I don’t know what you’re getting at. It was a show about war. It was grim. It’s not a optimistic take on the future. I don’t care if it had happy ending or if technically it was set in the past.
Except getting the dates wrong is exactly what the person writing the text in the image in the OP is showing was optimistic.
In reality it is incredibly, perhaps foolishly, optimistic to believe humanity (or just Americans) will explore the deep reaches of the universe at all.
This belief in exploring space as some kind of new manifest destiny is a peculiarly American phenomenon resulting from various obvious historical facts. It seems to be very difficult to let go of. Elon Musk hijacking the new space race for his personal profit, resulting in the coming loss to China will be hard to accept.
The old sci-fi assumed the rate of progress with be constant or even accelerate.
I mean… the one first 1950s sci-fi story I ever read as a kid was The Sound of Thunder. It is and will always be the first thing I think about when it comes to 50s sci-fi. And that story isn’t exactly happy or optimistic about humanity fucking around with tech and time, lol.
The year is 2025 And humanity is once again trying to reinvent the wheel
And failing, but we can’t use the old obes anymore. Maintaning them is a crime. So we just gave to roll around on little cubes listening to the axles creak until that heavy smack…
The more I learn about our modern age, the more I start to feel that the premise of the Matrix isn’t such a bad deal at all. Normally, we should be there by now, the machine war ended decades ago.
PK Dick: Everything’s been nuked and there are feral psychics roaming the wasteland stealing people’s emotions.
Even Superman had hover taxis by 1990.
Me too. My dream home would be inspired by Forbidden Planet
Old sci-fi be like
We’ve discovered a technology that explores the fundamental truths of human nature, gaze into the black mirror and reflect upon your modern folly.
…Also all the scientists are straight white men and we invented new ways for our women to cook dinner.
Edit: To be clear, old sci-fi is genuinely great. Merely pointing out the funny juxtaposition of nerdy white guys not fathoming any social change in their generally progressive and thought provoking works.
To be fair; the less commercial stuff was better at that.
The people writing science fiction were trying to make a living.
They wrote for magazines and TV shows that depended on advertising. A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren’t going to have a Black wom,an President.
Another thing to consider is how much change you can put into a story and still expect the average reader to keep up.
There was an article about an early Star Trek episode. One scene involved a couple of lines about a salt shaker. The production team went out and brought a bunch of wild looking salt shakers. [1960’s, remember?] None of the ‘futuristic’ looking salt shakers was any good for the scene, because they realized the TV audience wouldn’t understand what that funny looking thing was. In the end they used an ordinary looking shaker.
A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren’t going to have a Black wom,an President.
And neither did 21st century American voters.
Ba-dum tssssss
And then they repurposed the weird-looking salt shakers as medical instruments.
Read the same book…
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_World_of_Star_Trek
My favorite story is the one where a company that made automatic doors sent a letter asking how they got their door to move so smoothly…
Naomi Klein wrote about how older sci fi was so optimistic and how she thinks the current trend of depressing dystopian sci fi is bad for society, which was an interesting take I thought.
I think she’s right. There is certainly a space in fiction for depressing dystopias, but personally, I think that it is also important to make space for hopeful stories about the future. Else it’s just too dark. Our news are depressing, our lives are depressing. Our fiction is depressing. If there isn’t much positive stuff to look forward to, then what’s the point? In the 1930s, 40s and 50s where war and crisis and recovery was on the menu, fiction tended to be more comforting and hopeful.
That’s why Disney’s Snow White was such a massive success in 1937. It gave people a break from their lives and allowed them to dream themselves away to a different world where everything was a bit simpler, where the downtrodden, yet hardworking and kind herione is rewarded for her efforts in the end. Many people may nor have had that happy ending themselves, but it must have given them some hope to watch a film about someone just like them who managed to pull through in the end and have her worth validated.
Herzog said ‘we are running out if images’ and that shit’s real.
Both are saying the fire of our imaginations is dead, and strongly implying that we have forgotten how to even hope.
And, like… We have. We have forgotten how to imagine better, to want better, to build a tomorrow, because tomorrow is on the far side on this raging river of blood that is rapidly flooding, and the time we could have built a bridge is so very long past.
And proposing we switch the terror from white to red for five seconds is a thing you’re not allowed to say.
I agree.
you can see it in stories as simple as Star trek.
the after TNG it was about world building and character development.
then the reboot movie happened and it was about booms, zooms, and dooms after that.
the only thing that was remotely similar was season 2 of Picard. I haven’t watched 3 yet so IDK about it.
discovery is(and I mean this in the most platonic way), common TV garbage. I get the same feeling from it as I get from any other modern “syfy” show.
What about SNW?
The vibe I’m getting is “we’re eager and optimistic, but also, things get bad, the larger landscape is kinda bad and we are trying to hold straight faces?”
It feels very 2020s.
I haven’t seen SNW, from what I’ve seen(clips/reviews) it’s probably the most spirited successor to fit todays viewers.
But their computers are still the size of a room and everyone smokes
Our phones are just screens wirelessly attached to computers the size of buildings now. If Altman and Nvidia get their way data centers be the size of sport stadiums by next year.
Hey, my phone can do a lot just being the size of a phone. Running games, reading, voice synthesis and recognition, image and text generation, etc
Everyone still smokes. Our computers are the size of an apartment block; they make you not xall customer service and have wild new mental illness instead.
Well, we have lots of building-sized computers out there right now.
You jest! Asimov’s computers are the size of planets.
The ones that aren’t people, at least.
Their computers have AGI already. Our computers consume more energy than entire countries to make studio Ghibli fakes and autocomplete on steroids.
“The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” is one of the best self-aware computer novels.
I love that in the novel the computer has already become self aware before it attempts something really difficult - creating a CGI face for itself
Don’t forget the reels of tape lmao
When you saw how they managed to put a person on the moon with room sized computers and about 145K lines of code, yeah I can see how they think it’d be possible.
The industrial and technological revolutions were a cause of radical change in human civilization. It was inspiring to think we would continue to grow instead of monetizing every last vestige of this world and our psyches?!
Pretty much, I struggle to see any real human achievement in my lifetime. Sure we invented phones and computers are faster than ever before. We haven’t really done anything worthwhile. No real improvements in the human condition.
We have fun content, but our planet is going to cook
